The first conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954.[3] It was initiated by several people, including Polish politician-in-exile Józef Retinger who, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting Atlanticism—better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe to foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues.[4]

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent steering committee was established with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity.[7] Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first U.S. conference was held on St. Simons Island, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation also supplied funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.[5]

The group's original goal of promoting Atlanticism, of strengthening U.S.–European relations and preventing another world war has grown; the Bilderberg Group's theme is to "bolster a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe" according to Andrew Kakabadse.[3] In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and a steering committee member for 30 years, said, "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."[12]

According to the web page of the group, the meetings are conducted under the Chatham House Rule, allowing the participants to use any information they gained during the meeting, but not to disclose the names of the speakers or any other participants. According to former chairman Étienne Davignon in 2011, a major attraction of Bilderberg group meetings is that they provide an opportunity for participants to speak and debate candidly and to find out what major figures really think, without the risk of off-the-cuff comments becoming fodder for controversy in the media.[13] A 2008 press release from the "American Friends of Bilderberg" stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference and that at the meetings, no resolutions were proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued."[14] However, in November 2009, the group hosted a dinner meeting at the Château of Val-Duchesse in Brussels outside its annual conference to promote the candidacy of Herman Van Rompuy for President of the European Council.[15]

Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of approximately 18 nations.[16] Official posts include a chairman and an Honorary Secretary General.[9] The group's rules do not contain a membership category but former participants receive the annual conference reports.[17] The only category that exists is "member of the steering committee."[18] Besides the committee, there is a separate advisory group with overlapping membership.[19]

According to James A. Bill, the "steering committee usually met twice a year to plan programs and to discuss the participant list."[21]

In 2002, author Jon Ronson wrote that the group has a small central office in Holland [sic] which each year decides what country will host the forthcoming meeting. The host country then has to book an entire hotel for four days, plus arrange catering, transport and security. To fund this, the host solicits donations from sympathetic corporations such as Barclays, Fiat Automobiles, GlaxoSmithKline, Heinz, Nokia and Xerox.[22]

Partly because of its working methods to ensure strict privacy, the Bilderberg Group has been criticised for its lack of transparency and accountability.[31] The undisclosed nature of the proceedings gave rise to several conspiracy theories.[32][13][33] This outlook has been popular on both extremes of the political spectrum, even if they disagree about the exact nature of the group's intentions. Some on the left accuse the Bilderberg group of conspiring to impose capitalist domination,[34] while some on the right have accused the group of conspiring to impose a world government and planned economy.[35]

In 2005, Davignon discussed accusations of the group striving for a one-world government with the BBC: "It is unavoidable and it doesn't matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion. ... When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves."[33]

One of the most concise academic papers critical of Bilderberg's 'Deep State' role in influencing geopolitical events out of the public spotlight was written in 1996 by Prof. Mike Peters of Leeds Metropolitan University and published in Lobster. Entitled "The Bilderberg Group and the Project for European Unification", Peters expresses incredulity that so few academics have examined the Bilderberg Group's international financial and political lobbying clout but closely examines links between the post-war effort for a united Europe and specific individuals connected with the Bilderberg Group.

To anticipate what will be said later, I believe that one of the key assumptions often made by structural Marxists, namely that the capitalist class is always divided into competing fractions which have no mechanisms for co-ordination other than the state, is not empirically sustainable. Part of this misconception, it could be said, derives from an over-literal understanding of the concept of the 'market' as constituting the only social relation amongst different fractions of capital. At least as far as the very large, and above all, the international (or as we would say in today's jargon, the 'global') corporations are concerned, this is definitely not the case: very sophisticated organs do exist whereby these capitalist interests can and do hammer out common lines of strategy. Bilderberg is one of these mechanisms.[36]

In August 2010, former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote a controversial article for the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma in which he cited Daniel Estulin's 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,[39] which, as quoted by Castro, describes "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self."[34]

Concerns about lobbying have arisen.[47][48] Ian Richardson sees Bilderberg as the transnational power elite, "an integral, and to some extent critical, part of the existing system of global governance", that is "not acting in the interests of the whole".[49] An article in The Guardian in June 2017 criticized the world view expressed in an agenda published by the Bilderberg group.[50]

^"Japan–US Relations – Past, Present and Future". Daily Yomiuri. 8 December 1991. Rockefeller: The idea (of creating the Trilateral Commission) was incorporated in a speech that I made in the spring of 1972 for the benefit of some industrial forums that the Chase held in different cities around Europe, … Then Zbig (Zbig Brzezinski) and I both attended a meeting of the Bilderberg Group … and was shot down in flames. There was very little enthusiasm for the idea. I think they felt that they had a very congenial group, and they didn't want to have it interfered with by another element that would—I don't know what they thought, but in any case, they were not in favor.

^ abHatch, Alden (1962). "The Hôtel de Bilderberg". HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An authorized biography. London: Harrap. OCLC2359663. The idea was to get two people from each country who would give the conservative and liberal slant

^Hatch, Alden (1962). "The Hôtel de Bilderberg". HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An authorized biography. London: Harrap. OCLC2359663. anybody who has ever been to a Bilderberg Conference should be able to feel that he can, in a private capacity, call on any former member he has met